Indigenous communities: DIY Internet
The infrastructure of the Internet should not be owned by a few companies
For thousands of years, Commoning principles have enabled communities to share water from a stream. As we are now streaming educational services to children via the Internet, shouldn’t we learn how to better share that stream? There are many examples like the article linked below, where Indigenous communities simply took control by building their own infrastructure to connect to the Internet backbone and bypass traditional ISPs. Follow the link to read the full article in Mashable.
. . . there hasn’t been incentive for major internet service providers to do the work …. “Because of politics, geography, regulations, people were left out… The market-based approach has failed or isn’t profitable in these communities,” Buell said. As both Buell and Rantanen explain, many providers don’t believe the possible revenue from a small community is worth the construction costs needed to expand their current infrastructure into these rural communities. This is the step that community networks take on themselves.
Want to learn more about DIY Internet access?
We can apply Commoning principles to building our own Broadband #InternetForAll in Michigan.
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